Quinn Coleman

They being me and social media.

don’t ask me how the break is going…(It’s not.)
I went from being active daily to lurking daily.

But I’m trying!
in…some capacity.

Regardless, I wanted to share the newest addition to the Qunniverse in paperback
*drum roll here*

Look at that GINORMOUS book.
That right there is a 12lb baby.
A big chungus.
A chonk.

I’m so excited to get into it with a red pen.
I couldn’t resist putting a couple copies of book 4 backward to see what the shelf will look like with 6& 7 down the road.

In honor having this lovely lady on my shelf, here’s one of my favorite scenes in Jay’s point of view, featuring a throwback to the very beginning of her story with Russell.

Just that sentence made me teary-eyed.
As excited as I am to finish this series, it feels like sending a kid off to college (hello, a central theme of the book.)

I’m so thrilled for them.

But man, am I going to miss them.

---

POINT OF VIEW
Jay

The park is packed chaos full of kites, soccer, games of tag and flag football. To no one’s surprise, our Fourth of July party is huge, but we’ve managed to keep from taking over every picnic table in the vicinity, though it’s close. I think we have as many tubes of sunscreen out as we have water bottles and bags of Tostitos.

Pip is here with Katie, invited via Thomas, and some of the other folks from Stacks showed up. Including a newer blonde gal named Cammie who brought fifty mini goodie bags full of festive knickknacks. I’m wearing the star-shaped sunglasses on my head, using them to push back my bangs since they don’t fit on my nose with my regular glasses. M’Shawn and Big Al challenged Trent and Margo to a hot dog eating contest, but they only got through two rounds before Jorge broke the chaos up. Layla came with Dixie, and the pup is having a blast chasing after Ginger and Mo, Kyle’s dog which we kidnapped for the day.

Kyle himself might be the only one not here, and that’s because he’s coming down from a meeting in Philly.

He checked in this morning with Teddy and Russell as we packed the coolers; Kyle asked at least a dozen times in that one phone call if the boys really didn’t mind that he wanted to stop in Harrington, since it’s somewhat on his way home.

Russ was the one to finally say, “It’s fine, love you, bye, go away,” and he hung up the call. Kyle texted me a laughing and heart emoji; he’s been sending in some photos of the Delaware shenanigans since he got there an hour ago.

I spot Teddy still at the picnic table, now without Frankie. Colleen walks over, and Teddy gestures to the seat beside him; she takes it but leaves a couple feet between them. They turn toward the soccer field to watch some of the kids.

Licking my thumb of cantaloupe juice, I grab the hand sanitizer bottle, one of three hundred or maybe just five, and I clean up my hands.

A kid comes up near me, one I don’t know, but maybe she’s related to someone in our party. “Yo, there’s fresh fruit,” I tell her.

“Um…are you. Are you J. Belmonte?” she asks.

“Who’s askin’,” I grunt, wafting my stinging hands in the air.

“I-I’m uh…I’m Jasmine,” she says. I glance over my shoulder. In a cap two-sizes too big, her ears stick out, pierced with tiny red gems. Her brown eyes are large, circled by long lashes. With bony knees and a squishy face, she can’t be older than nine. “I um. Had a question,” she mutters, and she reaches into her backpack.

My back tenses, until she pulls out a book.

My book.

Published right out of high school.

A first edition of ‘The Wall That Listened’ with Thomas’s art as the cover.

Her shy smile shows a few teeth missing; she holds the book toward me. My mouth remains wide open. “Would you…mind signing it?”

I blink from her to the cover of a clearly well-loved paperback; the corners are frayed and dog-eared, the spine tired and flaky, the pages wrinkled and tabbed with different colors. Only books I see like this are those in Half-Price, aged and passed down generations.

“Are yuh serious?” I whisper, stunned. Jasmine’s brow starts to fall over her eyes, but I shake my head. “N-no uh—I mean yeah. Yes, I’ll sign it,” I chuckle, taking the book.

Jasmine glows and dives back into her Minion-themed backpack; she offers me a black pen. “How the heck didyuh find one’a these?” I nosily flip through it, admiring all the work she put into the annotations. “Geez, dude. This is nuts.”

“It was my older sister’s,” she says, “we used to read it together.” My stare flicks to her face. Her eyes widen. “Oh, she’s like, alive,” she adds on a laugh.

I laugh back and go to the title page, the dedication.

Tori’s name makes my heart slam to my chest.

Jordan’s makes it nearly stop.

My fingers brush over his name before I go back to the title page, and I set the book flat on the table to sign it. Jasmine sees her pen doesn’t work. “Shoot—” She scrambles into her bag again and hands me a blue one. She hugs her backpack as I scrawl my name, then I stare at the signature.

Jasmine deserves something else; something profound and life changing.

I wouldn’t know what the hell to write, though.

“I uh.” I glance up at her hesitant voice. “I was wondering why you stopped writing?” My eyes stray to the book. “I, I mean I know about…Russell,” she says, peeking over to where Russ sits with Katie on his knee, the silly star sunglasses from Cammie’s bag on his nose.

“Didyuh get to talk to ‘im?” I ask.

“He told me to come over here and say hi.” Of course, he did. “So I know why he stopped, but like. What about you?”

“I had a baby,” I blurt.

“So?”

“So, I got busy.”

“So? Just like, write it when you’re not busy,” she shrugs. “Mom’s busy. There’s four of us. But she makes time for bracelets with Nalette. And that like, takes a while.”

Jasmine blinks at me. She doesn’t have a clue, does she?

No, she wouldn’t.

“Do you write?” I ask her.

Her stare bounces from my face to the book and back. She nods.

“Whadyuh write, kid?”

“Sports books,” she says. “That really old movie Remember the Titans is my favorite.”

“Old movie—” Jesus…

“But it’s like. Hard sometimes. Mom says my brain goes really fast, but my hands can’t keep up. So it’s hard to write it.”

Don’t I know it. “A’ight, listen up.” Jasmine’s brown eyes turn into saucers and collect the bright sun overhead. “When yuh old enough, you reach out to Russ on social media, okay? We’ll do a writer thing or whatever.”

“A writer thing,” she whispers, voice wispy with awe.

“Yeah. Or…somethin’,” I mumble. “And in the meantime, um.” Staring at her book, I tap the pen in my fingers.

Below my signature, I scrawl ‘just write what you can’.

There. Take your damn advice, Belmonte.

I close the book and pass it back. “We’ll wait to hear from you, Jasmine.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she nods, so fast her hat slips backward an inch. She clutches the book and her backpack and scurries toward another party.

When I face my own, I spot Russell, his gaze on me. He taps the nose piece of his sunglasses and slides them down until I see his sky-blue eyes; they flick from Jasmine’s retreating form, back to me.

He hands Katie his phone. He says something to her and points, and she looks over at me.

She lifts his phone to take my picture. I hold up the cantaloupe rind in front of my mouth like a big, silly smile, all the while still feeling Jordan’s name in print beneath my fingertips.